It was an early start, we all arrived at 6.30am outside the Avondale Business School ready to board the bus for the excursion. Our first destination was the Qantas Jet Security Base at Mascot Airport in Sydney.
We arrived at the Jet Security Base by 9am just in time for our booked tour. We were greeted by Anton who took us around the Qantas security base. He explained his work career journey as to how he got to the position that he was doing now which is to train cabin crew on safety procedures of each different size Qantas plane. He initially started with Qantas as a cabin crew member and did that for a few years, and he mentioned that Qantas is great with offering and promoting positions internally to Qantas staff as long as you have the skills to do the job, you have a good chance of being successful in changing roles within the company.
Anton showed us around the facility, the training rooms, the room where all the safety equipment that you have on a plane such as fire extinguishers and life jackets and the cabin crew are trained on all the equipment and they have to learn and know every detail of each piece of equipment such as the angle that the each extinguisher has to be held for it to work and what type of liquid or fire the extinguisher can be used for and for how long the extinguisher will spray out its safety foam. Anton shared that the cabin crew are trained safety specialists and that this is a very important part of their job. The cabin crew and pilots are tested 4 times a year on all their safety knowledge and this also applies to the simulator machines. The flight crew and pilots are given a scenario and then have to go through and explain and act out the situation as if it was really happening. Anton took us on one of the training planes and had us experience the following scenario, “the plane is having a problem landing and will crash into the water, so brace yourselves”, he yelled out to get into the brace position and get out our life jackets and put them on. (Fake) Smoke filled the cabin and the lights were turned off, the scenario felt very real with the smoke and Anton yelling out instructions, he yelled out for us to get to the exit door and get out of the plane. It was very eye opening experience and I know that I will be much more alert and aware next time I go on a plane again.
Our next excursion for the day was to the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) in Sydney. We were shown into a board room and were privileged to listen to presentations of what training and knowledge you can gain from being a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
They explained that their members range from people that are recently in a new job position that will require them to be on a company board, to people that have been on a board for more than 10 years, so they all have different training requirements. AICD offers complimentary lounges where you can work and conduct meetings in all states of Australia. You can come into one of the offices and arrange an appointment to discuss your training needs and they will assign someone from AICD to keep in contact with you to see how you are going and if you require any assistance. They offer training in many different forms, such as in person training workshops and seminars, software tools that you can use to help you in your position as a board member. E-learning courses, and three to five days intensive courses which range from beginners to advanced for people that want to gain more experience in being a board member, company secretary or company director. We were one of the first student university groups that had the opportunity to tour the office and be given this presentation and the presenter mentioned that they had not received a tour request from students at a higher education institution. They also do not have a student membership fee option, which the students did enquire about. AICD said that a student membership fee and offering a tour to students from colleges and universities is something that they will look into and consider. The tour and presentation has given our students something to think about and hopefully helped to assist them in their career goals and further training options once they graduate from Avondale College.
